Things I learned in Ohio this week

My grandfather had a fainting spell with very low blood pressure and dehydration, and no one at the hospital can figure out why. (He seems okay now, but we're all a little uneasy.)

I can still find my way around North Canton, but I'm pretty lost in Akron.

My mother's bathroom scale is calibrated eight to ten pounds too light, and I don't think she knows it.

Venison chops are possibly even more delicious than venison steaks.

My cousin has a nose ring, and I don't think my aunt liked it when I said it looked good.

I can still run a mile with no trouble, but an arc training machine kicks my ass pretty quickly.

My mom and stepdad's gym is strangely conservative in that it prohibits sleeveless apparel.

I have a liver chi blockage (this, according to my sister the Chinese medicine practitioner).

Pastry shops are easier and more efficient to run if you own a convection oven (this, according to a pastry-shop owner in my mother's town, whom I subjected to an informational interview because I'm thinking of getting into the business in the next couple of years).

Someone in my family is a secret cigarette smoker.

I'm a lot better at contract rummy than I am at euchre.

My brother's fiancee liked heavy metal music long before he met her and started playing his CDs around her.

The city of Columbus, Ohio has utterly huge residential trash containers.

The movie Waking Life is better the second time through.

There are 11.5 million people in Ohio, yet no one in my family can go to any public place without seeing someone they know.